


Blind Heroics

by iguessyouregonnamissthepantyraid



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Best Friends, Drinking, Fluff and Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-24
Updated: 2015-04-24
Packaged: 2018-03-25 13:11:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3811774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iguessyouregonnamissthepantyraid/pseuds/iguessyouregonnamissthepantyraid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Now that Foggy thinks about it, this conversation has been a long time coming, ever since that night.</p><p>
  <i>Figures we’d be drunk when I finally get around to it, though.</i>
</p><p> </p><p>[Or, the one where Foggy finally voices how terrifying it is that his best friend might go and die on him any day now.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blind Heroics

**Author's Note:**

> This started out as a quick little paragraph-ish idea. Then it blew up into 2500 words. I can't take these two, I swear.

They stumble to the door to Matt’s apartment, Matt giggling as he hangs onto Foggy with an arm over his shoulders, nearly half of his weight dragging Foggy toward the floor as they push the door open. He is definitely way more drunk than Foggy is, that’s for sure; his super-senses or _whatever_ Matt calls them are clearly dulled down nearly to the point of complete and utter uselessness.

So, at least this time, the task of getting them safely home really _has_ been relying on Foggy’s eyesight alone.

… Which, given the way the room keeps spinning, makes Foggy think it’s a damned miracle they’ve made it this far.

Another giggle erupts from the bubbly drunk Matt on his shoulder, and out of the corner of his eye Foggy sees that big stupid grin on Matt’s face that he only gets when he is well and truly plastered.

“Nelson and Murdock!” he shouts as they make their haphazard way to the couch. “Crime-fightin’ extraordinairians!”

Foggy can’t help but echo his friend’s laughter, squeezing his eyes shut and shaking his head as he shouts back, “Extraordin _aires_ , dude, extraordin _aires_! And we’re not… we’re not, er, _I’m_ not, anyway…”

He shakes his head again, shoving Matt unceremoniously onto the couch. The idiot flops down stomach-first like a ragdoll, and then he flips over onto his back—a little _too_ quickly, for sure, by the way he blinks his glassy eyes hard like he just got the spins. His t-shirt is all twisted and stretched around his stomach, too, but he doesn’t seem to notice.

“Foggy, c’mon,” he says, staring in Foggy’s general direction and gesturing vaguely with his hands. “You’re—you’re basically a superhero. You saved that girl!”

Foggy yawns and his jaw cracks. “Nah,” he says, standing on one foot and bending over to try and pull off his shoe. _Woah, nuh-huh, bad idea_ , he thinks, abandoning that attempt within half a second. Instead he uses the couch for balance and lowers himself so that he’s sitting on his butt with his back against the front of the couch. He resumes his attempt at pulling his shoes off and says, “I saved _you_ , you—you big, uh… blind dumbass.”

Matt just laughs.

Foggy wrinkles his nose, and the thought occurs to him that he should maybe get up and grab some water from Matt’s sink. The last thing he needs is to fall asleep here and wake up with a raging hangover, right smack in front of Matt’s ridiculously huge windows as the sunlight starts to pour in.

… But he literally _just_ sat down. Getting up just kind of seems like an awful idea right about now.

_Hmm… I’ll think about it._

“Was pretty superhero-y, though,” Matt slurs from behind him.

Foggy snorts. “I just hit a guy in the head with a whiskey bottle,” he dismisses, and then he blinks and his eyes widen. “Oh, _crap_ , I hit him in the _head_. Shit. What if—what if he _died?_ Can I, uh, can I get arrested for that?”

“Nah,” Matt answers with a lazy shake of his head, more rolling his head back and forth on the pillow than anything else. “He was just— _hic_ —knocked out. And that girl, she uh, she called the police. He’s probably… in a hospital, or… or something.”

“What? No, she didn’t,” Foggy says with a raised eyebrow, half turning to look at Matt.

“After we— _hic_ —left.”

In his current state it takes a few seconds for Matt’s meaning to click, and when it does, Foggy lets out a quiet, “ _Oh_ ,” and turns forward again to lean back against the couch. “You heard it?”

“Mm-hmm.”

Again Foggy snorts. “ _Shit,_ man, that’s…” he trails off. He isn’t actually sure what that is. He just knows he probably is never gonna get used to it. “That’s how you knew she was getting mugged, too, huh?”

“Mm-hmm,” Matt hums again, and on the other end of the couch Foggy hears a _thump_. He looks just in time to see Matt kick off his other shoe, letting it fall to the floor.

At the reminder of how that whole altercation started in the first place—the drunken laughs at Josie’s, the way Matt suddenly froze and tilted his head like he was listening for something, one second telling some stupid joke and the next second frozen stock-still and then bolting out the door without a word the second after _that_ —Foggy reaches awkwardly behind him and smacks Matt… in the shoulder, he thinks. Maybe the chest. He doesn’t turn around to check.

“You’re an idiot, you know,” he says. He’s annoyed again—he almost forgot about that, damn it, with the adrenaline and whatnot—but he thinks he might be a little too drunk to actually explain to Matt _why_ he’s annoyed. Still, he gives it a shot. “You can’t just… I mean you can’t save _everybody_ , Murdock.”

Matt grunts in disagreement, shifting his position on the couch a bit.

“Don’t use that… tone of _grunt_ with me,” he argues. “Seriously dude, you… you were drunk off your _ass._ You still are!”

“So‘re _you_ ,” Matt mumbles.

“Yeah, but _I_ didn’t sprint out of Josie’s to go fight a big…” he trails off, waving his hand vaguely, “… uh, mugger… guy.”

“Yeah, you did!”

“ _After_ you did!” Foggy shoots back, reaching over his shoulder to hit Matt again. This time he’s pretty sure he hit his shoulder. “Because I didn’t think you were gonna make it out the _door_ , let alone… uh, _fighting_ , like you do. And do you—what, do you keep that old Dread Pirate Roberts mask in your pocket _all the time?_ ”

He twists around to watch Matt for a reaction, and apparently Matt notices, because instead of answering aloud he just lets out a heavy breath and nods.

“ _Why?_ ”

Matt shrugs. “The Daredevil mask’s… harder to hide.”

Foggy rolls his eyes.

“That’s not what I… _ugh_ , never mind,” he says. He doesn’t need Matt to tell him why he keeps the mask on him all the time. He already knows, Hell, he _saw_ why tonight. So Matt can jump at any sign of danger and rush to the rescue like the complete dumbass that he is. “Point is… you can’t just… _do_ that, not when you’re already on your… what, _seventh_ shot?”

“Uh… Eighth, I think.”

“Even better, eighth. You can’t do that. You almost… you almost _died_ , dude _._ ”

“Yeah, but that, uh… happens a lot.”

For half a beat Foggy sits there, still twisted around to look at Matt’s face, one hand braced against the couch. It takes a bit for his brain to catch up with what Matt just said.

And then, just like that, Foggy’s annoyance flares into actual anger.

“That’s _worse!_ ” he yells, and he takes a little bit of satisfaction in the way Matt winces at the noise. “Jesus _Christ,_ Matt. You almost died—like, _died_ , died. If I didn’t show up and wail that guy in the head, he…” Foggy scowls and his brow furrows. “He had a _gun!_ He was gonna shoot you— _don’t shake your head at me,_ Murdock _,_ I _saw_ it—and you weren’t gonna… You weren’t gonna just _parkour_ your dumb ass out of it, not this time, not _drunk_.”

Matt scrunches up his face and grunts again, but Foggy doesn’t give him the chance to argue.

“You seriously would have died!” Foggy repeats, because he feels like there should be more to this argument but his mind just keeps on circling back to that. “For real, _dead_ , end of the line. No more Matt Murdock to—to run off being a superhero and drive me fucking _insane_ all the time.”

Crap. There’s a lump in his throat now.

_Damn it, damn it, damn it._

“And you’re telling me that ‘ _happens a lot’_ like that somehow makes it _less_ of a big fucking deal?! _”_ he pushes on anyway, hitting Matt again, this time actually aiming for his chest. He glares at Matt’s stupid drunk-tired face, at the forever unfocused eyes staring half-lidded up at the ceiling. “Do you even _care_? Does it even matter to you?”

In the light from the obnoxious billboard in the window, he sees Matt’s take a slow breath, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he gulps. “I’m not… I mean, it’s _hard_ , Foggy, I can’t…” he tries to explain, clearly struggling with it. “You saw that girl. We… we saved her _life_. What was I supposed to do?”

Foggy pauses, trying to find a way to argue that, no, they _should_ have just stayed in the bar and let the mugging happen, consequences be damned.

But he finds pretty quickly that there isn’t a way to argue that.

Because Matt, in all his dumbass, moronic, _stupid…_ dumbass-ness… is at least partially right. The guy had a gun, and if he decided to use it on that girl… Foggy shakes the morbid image out of his head. He lets out a heavy sigh and turns away from Matt again, letting his shoulder blades fall back against the couch. He stares into space, chewing on the inside of his cheek.

It isn’t long before his eyes inevitably fall to that one spot on the floor, where just a few weeks ago a whole Hell of a lot of blood had been staining the throw rug. _Matt’s blood._

Now that Foggy thinks about it, this conversation has been a long time coming, ever since that night.

_Figures we’d be drunk when I finally get around to it, though._

He lets out another sigh. He should probably wait until they’re both sober and wide awake, but he has a feeling if he doesn’t spit it out now he never will.

Still. It takes him a few seconds of sitting there, chewing on his cheek.

“… I can’t plan your funeral, Mattie,” he says. His voice comes out quiet and hoarse and _damn_ it, that lump in his throat is getting more and more persistent. But at least right now he can blame the alcohol. Foggy gulps and shakes his head. “I can’t. I can’t do it. I… I got through Elena’s…” He has to pause for a second, _always_ has to stop whenever he brings up Elena, even after a full month. “I just barely managed to get through that, but…”

He takes a second to get his voice back in working order.

While he does, Matt’s hand slides off the couch and clumsily finds his shoulder, a heavy weight that lets him know that Mattie is actually awake and listening and that Foggy isn’t just talking to the ether about the very real possibility that he might have to bury his best friend one day.

 _One day._ Yeah, he thinks, _one day_. And to think that all these years Foggy always thought _he_ would be the first one to go, hopefully some far off day when they were both old and retired. Matt always seemed weirdly untouchable, like if fate decided to take his eyes when he was a stupidly heroic little kid then _surely_ he earned a long life with that. Wasn’t that how these things were supposed to work? Karma and all that crap?

Foggy takes a shaky breath, and he lets his head slowly fall back until it rests against Matt’s side. He stares up at the spot where the far wall meets the ceiling, suddenly unable to pull his mind away from _everything_ that had gone into the arrangements for Elena’s funeral, all the legal bullshit and the halfhearted recycled sympathy from every worker he had to come across… all while it was taking every ounce of strength Foggy had in him not to fall apart.

He hated every single second of it, but he _did_ it, for Elena.

But for Matt?

“… I wouldn’t be able to handle it, not—not when it’s _you_ ,” he finally says. He can’t even _think_ about it. He reaches up and puts his hand over Matt’s, squeezing the back of his palm. “Just don’t make me go through that, buddy. Okay?”

Matt lets out a low hum in—surprisingly—agreement, and he murmurs, “’m sorry, Foggy.”

“Don’t say you’re _sorry_ ,” he shoots back. “ _Agree_ with me. Just… just be more careful—No, you know what? Scratch that, I know I have to be more specific with you. How about… No more getting into stupid fights without the armor. Okay? That’ll be a new rule.”

“But… what if I’m out without it?”

“Then don’t go out without it, dumbass. Figure something out. Wear it under your clothes or—or keep it in a briefcase and you can, you know, Superman it.”

Matt gives off a huff that Foggy knows is supposed to be a laugh. “I can’t change in a phone booth, Foggy. They’re glass. People would see me.”

“Then change in an alley. I don’t care how you do it, just… figure it out. That’s my rule, okay? No fighting without the suit. Oh,” he adds, “and another thing! No going up against a lot of guys at once either.”

“ _What?_ ” Matt whines.

“You heard me.”

“What’s a lot?”

Foggy thinks on it for a second. He’s seen at least a bit of what Matt can do in the suit, so he knows that his own idea of taking on too many guys and Matt’s idea of taking on too many guys are too totally different things. “… Ten?”

“I can…” Matt tiredly trails off, “… I can handle ten. Easy.”

“Fine, whatever,” Foggy relents. “I’ll leave it up to you. Whenever you think it _might_ be a little too much for you to handle on your own—and I mean it, actually stop and think about it before you jump into the fight—you call me and Claire, or the police, or you call in a goddamn S.W.A.T. team, Murdock. That’s what they have S.W.A.T. teams _for_.”

“… Is that it?”

Foggy rolls his eyes. He’s still holding onto Matt’s hand, still leaning back against Matt’s side, and he has a feeling he _is_ going to wind up falling asleep here after all. He closes his eyes. “Yeah, smart ass, that’s it. Two rules. No fighting without the suit, and no taking on more guys than you can handle. Okay?”

Matt doesn’t answer at first, and Foggy opens his eyes and gives Matt’s hand a rough shake.

“ _Okay?_ ”

“’Kay, okay,” Matt sleepily mutters. “Got it.”

“Good,” Foggy says, closing his eyes again. “Cause I’m quizzing your ass on this in the morning.”

Again Matt huffs out a little laugh.

“Night, Nelson,” he murmurs.

He can tell Matt’s already half asleep, but that’s alright. Foggy _is_ going to quiz him on this in the morning. He’s gonna make sure he gets it drilled into that thick (and probably hungover) skull of his if it’s the last thing he does.

Besides, it isn’t a huge deal right now, because right now Matt’s okay. Matt’s alive.

And Foggy’s gonna make damned sure it _stays_ that way.

He shifts where he’s sitting. His tailbone is gonna be sore in the morning if he falls asleep like this, he knows, but he honestly doesn’t feel like moving right now. Knocking out a six-foot-three mugger with a bottle of Jack really takes a lot out of a guy.

Hell, Matt’s already snoring.

“… Night, Murdock,” Foggy mutters just before he drifts off himself.


End file.
